


outlast every outcast

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Tarsus IV, and all accompanying warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:51:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7767415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which five people find out about Tarsus IV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	outlast every outcast

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as [a prompt](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/post/148121942860/okay-so-i-just-saw-star-trek-tonight-and-spent-an) on [my Tumblr](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com) but I wrote like 5K and realized that it had turned into a proper fic, so I crossposted it here.

This is how Commander Spock, First Officer of the USS _Enterprise_ , learns about Tarsus IV.  It’s a year into their five year mission, and the away team is wrecked on a planet that’s about eighty percent rock—and about zero percent food.  So it’s Spock, Jim, two injured security officers, and one of Uhura’s communications ensigns, under an atmosphere that’s so laden with storms and lightning that it’s going to take the _Enterprise_ days to get them out.  The weather has to clear before even Scotty’s miracle-working can get a beam down here, and while they’ve got all the water they could want torrenting out of the sky, their shuttle is dead as a doornail and they do _not_ have enough rations.  Spock’s calculations indicate that they have enough for two days.  The storm is going to last four, absolute minimum.  Kirk doesn’t even blink when he’s informed of this discrepancy, and calmly sits down and rearranges all of Spock’s values.  He has everyone eating on less than a third of their average caloric intake, but he’s somehow stretched their food to a week.

“I could probably make all this last longer,” the captain says with a wave at the rations, as if at an embarrassment of riches.  “But I know Scotty and if we’re here more than a week, I’ll eat the impulse drive.”

“Captain,” Spock says, frowning at the calculations, “you have not allotted yourself sufficient food intake.”

“It’s called rationing, Spock, insufficient food is sort of the point,” he says with a laugh, and there’s something in the way he half-turns away that makes Spock press the argument.

“You are an adult Terran male, but you have allotted yourself significantly less food than any of the other members of the away team, including myself.  Vulcans can function--”

“Commander,” the captain says, turning a sharp blue gaze on him.  “I’ve made the decision.  I know how to function on minimal calories.  If I needed to, I could skip rations completely for quite a while, to make sure that—to distribute them as effectively as possible.  You have the most endurance, which will be necessary if we need to range out farther for more food.  Ensigns Hu’rin and Lawson are injured, which is an energy drain.”

“And Ensign Tellan?  She is young and healthy, surely you could--”

“Enough, Spock,” the captain— _Jim_ says quietly, a note in his voice that makes Spock close his mouth at once.  “This is what we’re doing.  You can reprimand me for emotional decision making once we’re back on the ship.  But I’m not letting my people go hungry.  Not again.”

Spock has only seen James Kirk’s medical file a handful of times, generally after a catastrophic injury necessitating emergent care, but he looks it up again—the parts he’s able to access with his XO code—once they return to the _Enterprise_ , malnourished but unhurt.  The captain has a prodigious list of allergies, and a three year blank spot—classified, classified, _very_ classified, reports the PADD.  Signs of extreme malnutrition and undetailed scarring are all that he can find about that time.  Some twelve years earlier, planet unnoted but non-Terran, an apparently crippling famine—Spock can do the mental arithmetic. 

“Captain,” he says crisply when he appears beside his biobed—Doctor McCoy insisted on keeping the captain longer, but hadn’t asked any questions about why he was even worse off than the others.

“Right,” the captain— _Jim_ says with his usual wry grin.  “I forgot I’m about to get reamed out for emotional decision making.  Let’s have it, maybe Bones will let me go just to get rid of us.”

Spock sets the PADD on Jim’s side table with a loud click and folds his hands behind his back in parade rest.  “I do not approve of you placing yourself at risk for the sake of the crew.  You are our captain and we function optimally with you in command, and as such you should not be so determined to protect us at your own expense.  It is illogical that you insist on taking a course of action which repeatedly places us in a position of lacking your presence at the conn.”  Jim looks bemused, almost baffled, as if lost by the conversation, but Spock carries on, as the captain is a brilliant man perfectly capable of catching up.  “However, you were correct in your statement that you were familiar with the practice of functioning on minimal nutrition, while the rest of us were rendered quite unwell by five days of one-third rations.  Your logic may have been comprehensible, but I encourage that you do not repeat the exercise.  I also recommend that you install a more secure codelock on your medical history, as a classified notice does not preclude cursory research on famines during a three year period.”

The captain’s confusion evaporates and his face goes unusually stern.  “Noted, Commander,” he says.  “And I trust that you’ll be discreet with this information.”

“Naturally, sir.”  Spock stands there for another moment, quiet, then speaks again.  “I apologize for investigating your history without your explicit permission, Captain.”

“Jim, Spock, we’ve been over this, you can call me Jim,” Jim says, flicking a quick smile up at him.  “And it’s all right.  I’d’ve done the same.  It’s just not something I talk about, much.”  Spock doesn’t say so, as he leaves the med bay, but he thinks he wouldn’t talk about Tarsus IV much either. 

* * *

 

This is how Captain Christopher Pike, promised the command of the starship _Enterprise_ and instructor at Starfleet Academy, learns about Tarsus IV.  Rather, this is how Jim Kirk learns that Pike knows, because Pike is tight-lipped about exactly how he found out, and that _strongly_ suggests to Jim that Number One applied her hacking talents to Federation files.  (This is not true, but this is Jim’s assumption.)  Jim is in his third semester at the Academy, burning through the command track classes like a magnesium flare, almost too brilliant to look at.  He has been placed in the mandatory Planetary Ethics class, and they are two months into the curriculum when he walks in and gets a scowl from the Andorian professor, who dislikes him.  Jim is loud and stubborn and iron-hard in his beliefs, which the professor has dealt with before—Jim also has an annoying habit of coming armed with copious data and airtight arguments, which is less typical.

Jim flashes the professor a dazzling smile, the most charming one he can muster, and goes to sit down.  The professor queues up the day’s holoprojection, a planetoid with an Earth-like atmosphere and gray-green landmasses.  Jim looks over the planetoid, eyes flicking to the white letters shimmering beneath the rotating sphere with a dangerous lurch of having forgotten something critical, and feels his comm ping through a haze of red fury as he flips up the syllabus on his PADD.  _Response to Planet-wide Famine_ , announces the syllabus, and Jim can’t, he _cannot_ listen to the professor play devil’s advocate for Kodos, he can’t, he will actually kill someone, and then where will he be?

The comm pings again, the urgent tone this time, and he looks down numbly—Captain Pike.  He doesn’t open it, just stands up blindly and says something—he thinks he says something—to the professor about a meeting with his adviser.  He has no idea if Pike actually wants to meet with him, but he’s not staying here, even if it gets him on academic probation indefinitely. 

He lets his feet drag him toward Pike’s office, expecting to have to hunt the man down, but instead he slams right into him on the steps outside the lecture hall.

“Come on, kid,” Pike says, steadying Jim and pulling the PADD out of his grip.  “Let’s go.”

“Sorry I didn’t answer your comm, sir,” Jim mutters, and Pike sighs, clapping him on the shoulder.

“If you’d checked your messages before you went to class,” Pike says, steering him down the stairs and across the quad, “you’d have seen that I arranged for you to be excused from this week’s lectures.”

Jim stops in his tracks, blinking at Pike slowly, the words slotting into place one at a time, like he’s trying to think through mud.  “You…did that for me?”

Pike obviously considers making a teasing remark about doing it to avoid the paperwork of Jim’s latest sally against the professor, but instead he offers a warm smile and a gentle squeeze of Jim’s shoulder.  “Sure I did, Jim.”

“How did you…know?” Jim asks after another long pause.

Pike clears his throat and pointedly says nothing.  “C’mon, you can sit in my office while I grade papers until I hand you off to your doctor friend tonight.  Number One made me get a new couch, it won’t even cause permanent bone bruising.”

“Think your last couch did as much damage to my bones as Tarsus,” Jim says, managing to crack a small grin, and Pike gives him one of those looks that suggests that, while he’s not going to interfere with Jim’s gallows humor, he would also like to give him a hug and something made of chocolate. 

He gets one of two, in Pike’s office, where the captain confiscates his schoolwork in exchange for his personal PADD—Bones is obviously in cahoots, he notes distantly—and breaks a piece of dark chocolate in half to share.

He gets two of two later, when he’s mostly calmed down enough to do a matrix without screwing up all the calculations, and Pike tries to be real subtle about walking over and resting a hand at the base of Jim’s neck for a few seconds.  It’s not at all subtle, but Jim doesn’t shrug him off.  It makes Pike feel better to exercise some of his protective instincts, and quite frankly, it makes Jim feel a little better too.

* * *

This is how Leonard McCoy, MD, brand-new Starfleet cadet and recently dubbed ‘Bones,’ learns about Tarsus IV.  He’s been in Starfleet all of about a month and a half, been accepted to work at the on-campus hospital, been assigned a roommate who’s still completing his MD and makes him feel _old_ , and acquired a barnacle, because apparently an irate shuttle ride, an exchange of alcohol, and a few personal stories are enough to cement a friendship in Jim Kirk’s mind.  (Later in life, Len will re-evaluate and decide that he was doomed from the moment he sat down, because Jim’s idea of ‘making friends’ has always been ‘act like you’re already best friends and wear the other party down by sheer bloody-minded persistence.’  Having seen this work on a Vulcan or four, Leonard doesn’t feel nearly so bad about caving.)

But so that’s how he gets the comm ping— _right after_ he gets off a twelve-hour shift, by the by—that informs him that a Cadet Kirk has been brought in and is staunchly refusing medical care unless it’s administered by McCoy.  So he goes, and it turns out that through an altercation with another student has landed _Cadet Kirk_ with three broken ribs and a spectacular black eye, and he won’t take off his shirt for an exam, never mind letting anyone near him with the osteoregenerator.  A beat-to-hell Jim is less common than Len had expected, given how he looked when they met—apparently he only starts pointless fights when really drunk and in the right sort of mood—but somehow it isn’t a surprise that he’s an awful patient.

It _is_ kind of a surprise that he looks perfectly clear-eyed, if breathless.  Normally broken ribs will make a patient a little high on the pain, even if they’re being stubborn jackasses and refusing pain medication that would make them authentically high.  Len expected Jim to be resisting out of petty irritation, the same sort of childishness he sees in patients all the time, but if it weren’t for the black eye currently going a rather lovely purple and the carefully protective hold of his arm over his ribs, Jim would look like he was ready to go present a debate to the Academy board.

“Bones!” he cries in greeting.  A grin blooms over his face, and it has to hurt, because there’s a split lip that starts seeping again, but he doesn’t seem to notice.  Len’s just working up to a complaint about the nickname when Jim continues, “I didn’t think you’d come, I’m sorry to drag you back after you finished a shift.”

He seriously considers being offended about that—didn’t think he’d _come_?  He’s an ill-tempered bastard, but he’s pretty sure he’s made it clear that he helps his friends, even if they’re blue-eyed barnacles with exactly zero comprehension of personal space and more smarts than are good for them.  “Then why did you make them call me?” he finally asks, scowling over Jim’s head at a nurse.

Jim shrugs, apologetic.  “I figured that once you didn’t show up, they’d have to let me go.  Sorry.”

Len makes an irritated noise and gently grips Jim’s jaw, tipping his head to get a better look at the black eye.  “Well, now that I’m _here_ , we’ll take an exam room.”  He looks at the nurse and adds, “And I’m gonna need his medical records so I know if I’m about to kill him with a painkiller.”  Jim goes still under his hands, tense, his usual lanky calm falling away.  “Did I hurt you?” he asks, loosening his grip.

“’S just cracked ribs, Bones, no need for my full file.” 

“I need your file, Jim.”

“No, you _don’t_ \--”  Jim pauses for a second.  “Unless…hang on, Bones, can I make you my primary doctor?”  Len nods slowly, wary, because in his (admittedly limited) experience, nothing that makes Jim look like that ends well.  Jim seems to steel himself, taking a deep breath and speaking in a forcibly steady voice, and refuses to meet Len’s eyes.  “Okay.  If you’re the only doctor I see, you can have my file.”

It’s not ideal, but Len takes the offer, and Jim lets him pull his shirt off to look at his ribs, where the bruising is starting to go a nasty blue-black.  “Jim,” he says, careful and neutral and suddenly grateful beyond words for the privacy of the exam room.  He spreads his palm against the unbruised skin behind Jim’s shoulder, feeling the thin cording of scars against his hand.  The scars aren’t grotesque or dramatic, they’re neatly healed and straight as razor cuts, slightly raised, and they litter Jim’s shoulders and upper back.  “What are these?”

Jim’s muscles are hard as steel beneath his hand.  “Whip scars,” he mumbles, like he wouldn’t mind if Len pretended not to hear him.  “It’s in the file.”  He doesn’t say more, and Len doesn’t ask, and they finish the exam in silence.  Len bundles Jim off into his room and puts him to bed gruffly, and for the first time since they met Jim doesn’t offer his crooked, wicked grin as Len leaves.

Len locks himself into his room and opens the file.  There are tags marking the places where _classified_ warnings would normally hide the information, but nothing is redacted.  Probably Jim’s doing, it seems like something he’d do—if he’s going to let Len have the file, he’s going to give him the _whole_ file and probably go out of his way to never discuss any of it in person.  “All right, kid,” Len mutters to himself, scrolling back through a laundry list of bruises and breaks, typical of someone with a habit of getting into trouble.  “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Let’s be clear.  Leonard Horatio McCoy is a hardened trauma surgeon, and, even if having all his molecules zapped through space gives him what his nana used to call the collywobbles, that means he’s a hard man to shake.  He makes it less than halfway through the kid’s childhood before he decides he needs alcohol to handle this, because right there, in the middle of what he’s prepared to bet money is an abusive stepfather’s work, is the announcement _Assessment performed on retrieval from Tarsus IV_.

_ Severe malnutrition, borderline starvation _

_ Dehydration _

_ Evidence of having been whipped _

_ Evidence of restraints _

That’s about as far as Len makes it before he gets that drink.  The rest of it is detailed, intricate, and there is a clear note that the boy had to be sedated to keep him in the bed.  There are pictures.  Len can’t make himself look at them.  He spends the entire night poring over the file, goes to classes on less than no sleep and hungover, and finds Jim in the dining hall.

“Come here,” he orders, and Jim does, wary.  “We don’t have to talk about it, not ever if you don’t want, but I haven’t slept and my head’s about to crack open and you’re going to let me give you a hug before I go collapse.  Doctor’s order or what-the-fuck-ever.” 

Jim huffs a laugh.  “Okay, Bones,” Jim says, and lets him.  Len gives up on not being called Bones for the rest of his life.  He only makes it about another two months before he catches himself greeting a stranger with “Hey, I’m Bones—shit, no, Leonard.”  He’s going to be Bones for all of eternity and go into the death trap of deep space with this blue-eyed idiot and probably die horribly at a young age and it’s all going to be because he shared his flask with some drunk jackass on the shuttle.  His life would be infinitely easier if he developed a sudden craving to be a potato farmer in Eurasia. 

He hugs Jim tighter and admits to himself that he maybe won’t mind so much.

* * *

This is how Lieutenant Commander Winona Kirk, lately of the _Valiant_ engineering crew, learns about Tarsus IV.  She’s been off-planet four years, bouncing from ship to ship as a troubleshooter in the engineering departments—she’s been on the _Valiant_ for longer than most, because their chief engineer came down with Andorian shingles, and the fever got so bad he started to hallucinate and miswired half the sensors before someone caught him and hauled him off to the med bay.  She hasn’t heard from her kids in years and she misses the fuck out of them, but out here in the black…it’s the closest she’s felt to George since he died.  She keeps meaning to go back, but the boys are with Frank, and he’s always been good to her, he’ll take care of her sons.  Sam loves the man, and if Jimmy doesn’t get along with him—well.  Jimmy barely gets along with himself, most days, so it’s nothing new.  Growing up the _Kelvin_ baby, with his father’s ice blue eyes and burnished gold hair, made him a prickly little shit, which, normally, she would approve of, being something of a prickly shit herself.  She just wishes he could get along get along with Frank for a few consecutive seconds.

It’s two standard weeks until Jimmy’s birthday, the anniversary of the _Kelvin_ , when the news starts rolling in about Tarsus IV, the blight, and their Carthaginian lunatic of a governor.  It’s a catastrophe of the highest degree, some four thousand executed and another two thousand dead of starvation over the last year.  The _Valiant_ is in entirely the wrong quadrant to be of any use, so all they can do is wait and listen and watch the nightmare slideshow of images the news starts reporting.  It makes Winona a little nauseated, but holds her attention like a starship wreck—inescapable.  Everyone and their cousin is getting comm pings from Starfleet command, updates and orders, so when she sees the first one, she ignores it and carries on repairing the _Valiant’s_ sensor array.  The second and third come in rapid succession, while she’s asleep, and the fourth comes in at about the same time as Captain Pike, who bursts into her quarters with an uncharacteristically hard look in his eye.

“Lieutenant Kirk,” he snaps, and she glances up at him.  He trailed around after George like a puppy when he was an ensign on the _Kelvin_ —she has trouble really thinking of him as a captain now.  “Do you know where your son is, right now?”

“Probably detention,” she says, because only Jimmy makes people get that look in their eye, and Jimmy’s thirteen now, about the right age to be in detention a lot, if she knows her son.  “If you don’t mind, Chris--”

“Captain,” he says shortly, and she pulls up short, because he’s never insisted on formalities in private before.  “And I think you’ve missed something, Lieutenant.  Check your comms from Starfleet Command.”

“Captain,” she said slowly, reaching out for her PADD, “what’s going on?”

“When you didn’t respond to their messages, they contacted me and informed me that James Tiberius Kirk is on board the _Defender_ ,” he says, voice tight and angry, his whole body taut as a guitar string.  “Being transported back from Tarsus IV along with thirty children that he saved from a genocide.”

Winona feels like a hole’s been punched in the hull of the ship, the words _explosive decompression_ drifting through her brain at random.  She can’t breathe, and for a second all she can see is Jimmy, little baby Jimmy, cradled to her chest and looking up at her with his father’s eyes.  “Jimmy?” she breathes, and the word hurts like something barbed.

Pike’s eyes don’t soften.  “He’s halfway starved to death, but they say that he’ll make a full recovery if they can get him to eat without being able to see the others.”

“What was he even doing on Tarsus?” she whispers, and she can see that this doesn’t particularly endear her to Pike.

“I don’t know, Lieutenant,” he says, and his voice is cold.  “I was planning to ask you.  He’s been there two and a half Terran years.  I’ve given orders to rendezvous  a transport to get you to the _Defender_ in a couple days.  Try and figure out what you’re going to say.”

Winona gets on the transport and comms Frank and shouts herself hoarse down the line.  She isn’t sure what she’s expecting when she gets on board the _Defender_ and is escorted by a very chilly nurse to her son, but the frigid blank look he gives her…well.  She’s not surprised.  He looks fragile beyond belief in the biobed, every bone standing out in high relief, and his ice blue eyes are shadowed.

“Hi, baby,” she whispers, feeling like an intruder.

He doesn’t even greet her, responds like she’s just another nurse.  “Have you seen my kids?” he asks, and his voice is a ruined mess, deeper than she remembers, cracked and raw.  “They won’t let me see them.  Are they okay?”

Winona takes a deep breath and decides that she can do this for him, at least.  She reaches out slowly to take his skeletal hand and while he doesn’t pull away, he doesn’t do anything else either.  “I’ll find out, Jimmy.”

“Not Jimmy,” he says after a moment. 

“Okay, baby.  They called you JT, you want me to use that?”

“No,” he says, sharp as the crack of a breaking bone.  “Just Jim.”

Winona rubs the back of his hand with her thumb and nods.  “Okay, Jim.”

* * *

This is how James T. Kirk, twelve years old and going by JT, learns about Tarsus IV.  He’s always had good instincts, hell, he’s always _prided_ himself on his good instincts.  His instincts are how he knows who will and won’t get over the family name, how he knows that his mother cares about him and his brother even if she can’t pry herself away from the stars to actually _do_ anything with or for them, how he knows things like the last possible moment to jump out of a crashing car.  Good instincts are why Sam was surprised and horrorstricken the first time Frank aimed a backhand at JT’s jaw, whereas JT himself was resigned. 

He’s always thought his instincts were maybe the only praiseworthy thing about him, given the way everyone else acts.  He knows he’s intelligent—a genius, based on every aptitude test ever—and good under pressure, charming and likely to grow up handsome, but somehow those always get brought up as flaws.  Too smart, too clever, too pretty, he’s always too _something_ to stay out of trouble.  But everyone admits that his instincts are good.

Or he thought they were, but maybe not.  Because when he lands on Tarsus IV for what Frank called ‘attitude readjustment’ he thinks he’s died and gone to some agrarian version of Heaven.  He doesn’t mind helping with the farms, and the schools are challenging, pushing him to his limit for the first time ever, and everyone there treats him like _JT_ , resident prodigy and good kid, not _Jimmy Kirk_ , son of the _Kelvin_ hero.  He learns five languages from Hoshi Sato and particle physics from a Vulcan and how to juggle from an Andorian and how to hack a computer in under a minute; helps find a better way to keep the native grey razor grass from inching into the fields; makes a few friends who think he’s witty and clever and kind—he makes a few enemies too, but nothing serious, and the adults actually step in when arguments start to escalate.  Tarsus is everything JT could have put together into a list of his ideal life, if anyone had ever pressed him.  The governor doesn’t even register, because Kodos is like that, that’s his appeal—he’s just one of the people, unremarkable in a crowd, not particularly special in any way other than his level head.

Still.  JT is a genius, so when a blight starts creeping into the fields and rotting them where they stand, he notices.  When there’s a quiet slide from unlimited food availability into rationing, he notices.  When people start disappearing, he notices. 

There’s a claim that they were being moved to another settlement, to stretch the food further, but he has a bad feeling. 

There’s a claim that the blight is nothing to worry about, that it’ll vanish shortly and they have plenty of stockpiles, but he has a bad feeling.

There’s a claim that someone contacted Starfleet, but he has a bad feeling.

Then he’s part of a group of a thousand colonists brought in for what is reportedly a vaccine, because the blight is bringing a virus, and they have to save the colony.  Everyone who’s been moved to the other settlement has been vaccinated, they’re assured as they’re ushered into a massive room, big enough to hold all of them, so just wait calmly and they’ll be cycled through to get the injection.

There are guards on the doors, JT sees with a sick lurch, his bad feeling blossoming into something like adrenaline-thundering terror.  They don’t look like guards, casually dressed, leaning against walls or pacing like they’re fidgety, but he knows what it looks like when an adult is planning to keep you from leaving the room.

“Hey, JT, are you all right?” someone near him half-laughs.  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He’s just opening his mouth to say that _no_ , he’s _not_ all right, and he has the horrible feeling that if they don’t get out _right now_ , none of them will be all right, when the screen on the far side of the room glows to life, the level, unremarkable face of Governor Kodos glowing on it.  JT’s heart stops, and when it picks up again, Kodos is talking in his deep, slow voice.  The world seems to be happening in single frames around him.

_“The revolution is successful.”_

A fine blue mist begins to drift down from the ceiling, where the air vents are hidden, as the colonists stand attentively, watching the screen.  JT is watching the mist.

_“But survival depends on drastic measures.”_

JT reaches out on instinct— _instinct_ again—and grabs the two closest people, a young woman and a kid, maybe six years old.  He shoves them down, toward the ground, and keeps a hold on their sleeves as he backs up toward the door.

_“Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society.”_

The crowd is frozen, like they can’t understand what’s happening, and the little boy is dragging at JT’s side as he forces a path through the crowd.  _Run_ , he thinks desperately, _we all have to run_ , but with a thousand people packed into a room, taking a deep breath is hard, and flight almost impossible.  Part of his brain notes the tactical move with something like approval.

_“Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony.”_

The blue mist filters down, shimmering in the light, and JT breaks into the clear area near a door at last, several people in tow.  Kids, mostly, who saw him move and trusted him enough to follow.  Only one or two adults.  The guard looks like a guard now, a mask covering his nose and mouth, phaser out and leveled at them, and JT has a moment of either supreme idiocy or brilliance.  He attacks, goes straight for the hand holding the phaser, and he strikes so viciously and instantly that he actually wins.  He shoots the guard without thought for what the phaser is set to, and then fires another bolt into the air.

_“Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death.”_

JT screams as loudly as he can, but the room is huge and he’s just one kid, so his shout of “ _Run!”_ dies out quickly.  The room churns to life anyway, people fighting toward the doors, and JT knows, cold and clear, that they won’t make it.  There are too many of them.  Their numbers are their weakness, they can’t all make the doors.  Even if they did, they’re locked, and the colonists aren’t armed.

_“Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.”_

JT grabs the kid—he thinks his name is Kevin—and picks him up, and then shoots at the lock on the door.  He shouts to the kids behind him to follow and they burst out of the gas chamber just as the fine blue mist starts to kiss skin.  Kevin is screaming, the high and endless scream of a terrified child, and there are a dozen kids all watching JT for instruction as they bolt down the hall.  There’s more screaming behind them—the gas must not be painless, he thinks numbly, and for a split second all he wants is to curl up in a ball.

JT shoulders Kevin higher, and calls, “Follow me!  We’re gonna get out of this!”

They follow.


End file.
